Letters: Pie guy, March for Science

April 27, 2017 10:00 AM

Bad timing

Re “Pie guy eager for another moment in spotlight” (Marcos Breton, April 23): While I am not the defense attorney for Sean Thompson, I am a proponent of any defendant receiving a fair trial before an impartial jury of their peers. Unfortunately, that possibility has been torpedoed by Marcos Breton. I realize he writes an opinion column. However, it is the timing, not the content, which I find especially troubling. Breton’s opinion should have been reserved until after the trial.

Greg Ball, Rancho Cordova

Civil disobedience

Sean Thompson engaged in an act of civil disobedience when he hit former Mayor Kevin Johnson with a pie. Civil disobedience inherently involves an intentional violation of the law, but its long and storied place in our nation presumes a willingness to be arrested and go to jail as the price of placing a higher value on a political statement.

Thompson is not part of that honorable tradition. The court should disallow his efforts to turn the trial into guerrilla theater.

That’s why my church, the Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento, and other congregations marched for science, and why we’ll be there on Saturday at the People’s Climate Mobilization Sacramento as well.